Day 2...Going Strong!

Wow! What an amazing group of children!!

This morning the children came in and knew the routine that I just taught them yesterday. It was such a smooth beginning...only the second day of school and I was able to file and organize the paperwork that the parents filled out last night. Truly, that is an amazing accomplishment!

Math began with a warm up. The children completed charts on different ways to write numbers, ie. standard form (125), word form (one hundred twenty five) and expanded notation (100+20+5). They also participated in our first fire drill.

After the fire drill, the children worked on the preassessment for unit 1 in math. This is NOT graded. It is intended to be an instructional tool for me to determine what their needs are in order to properly plan my lessons. We will review the preassessment tomorrow.

Following math, we read the morning message, identified letters that looked similar and different in cursive and we discussed Anchor Activities. Anchor Activities are ongoing activities which the children can choose from when they are "finished" with assigned activities.

We also discussed picking "just right books". In short, a vacation book is one you are familiar with, you know all of the words and it is easy. A Working on book is one where you know MOST of the words and understand most of the story...these are books we typically use in reading groups for instructional purposes. Finally, a Dream book is a book that has more than 3-5 words on a page that are new and a storyline which the reader struggles to keep up with. These books are best used as read alouds at home.

After reading, the children went to PE, lunch and recess.

After recess, I plan to read chapter 2 of Frindle. Then the students will work on a baseline writing activity so that I can assess their skills and plan for instruction. We will conclude our day with our first science lesson. Students will learn the three types of fingerprint patters (loop, arch and whorl) and identify these patterns in their own fingerprints.

A word about homework...I will begin assigning homework NEXT Tuesday.